Today we headed to the ocean accompanied by a western breeze, breaking the ocean surface and creating some random little whitecaps.

Not far from the coast we found three common dolphins heading towards West. They seemed busy and in a hurry, maybe were part of a larger group engaged in some foraging activity. We left them soon after as our look out André found a group of Atlantic spotted dolphins … oh yes we said André and not Filipe. André recently joined Terra Azul and together with Filipe will be our land effort for finding whales and dolphins! Welcome André 😉

 

The Atlantic spotted dolphins were foraging in association with Cory’s shearwaters, likely in an early stage of collaborative foraging, they were spread out and fast swimming in one direction and some individuals were porpoising. Other smaller and tighter groups of spotted dolphins were socializing and engaged in body contact.

Porpoising occurs when dolphins jump consequently out of the water during directional movements. It is a way to go faster, in fact when dolphins surface to breath they experience some drag between the two media: water and air. However, jumping out of the water with the whole body allows them to exploit the push and in this way they can move easily forward.

 

 

Coincidence wants that we found a group of about 40 bottlenose dolphins also fast travelling to West and also porpoising… Despite the larger and heavier bodies with respect to spotted dolphins, they can be agile and seeing them jumping is always a great show 🙂 and because we were enjoying this show we didn’t take any pictures, so the ones posted refer to nice groups encountered during earlier trips.

In the group there were juveniles and calves of different age stages, even newborns. We could accompany them for a while before heading back.

 

Looking forward for tomorrow’s show 😉

Arianna Cecchetti

About Arianna Cecchetti

Arianna is a Marine Biologist and was Main Guide at TERRA AZUL since 2009, and Technical & Scientific Director until 2018. Originally from Italy, she sees herself more as a world citizen. Arianna deserves the very best, and we hope she can come back to share her passion for the sea with us again.

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